About this item
*Named a Best History Book of the Month by Barnes and Noble* Three generations of English merchant adventurers-not the Pilgrims, as we have so long believed-were the earliest founders of America. Profit-not piety-was their primary motive. Some seventy years before the Mayflower sailed, a small group of English merchants formed "The Mysterie, Company, and Fellowship of Merchant Adventurers for the Discovery of Regions, Dominions, Islands, and Places Unknown," the world's first joint-stock company. Back then, in the mid-sixteenth century, England was a small and relatively insignificant kingdom on the periphery of Europe, and it had begun to face a daunting array of social, commercial, and political problems. Struggling with a single export-woolen cloth-the merchants were forced to seek new markets and trading partners, especially as political discord followed the straitened circumstances in which so many English people found themselves. At first they headed east, and dreamed of Cathay-China, with its silks and exotic luxuries. Eventually, they turned west, and so began a new chapter in world history. The work of reaching the New World required the very latest in navigational science as well as an extraordinary appetite for risk. As this absorbing account shows, innovation and risk-taking were at the heart of the settlement of America, as was the profit motive. Trade and business drove English interest in America, and determined what happened once their ships reached the New World. The result of extensive archival work and a bold interpretation of the historical record, New World, Inc. draws a portrait of life in London, on the Atlantic, and across the New World that offers a fresh analysis of the founding of American history. In the tradition of the best works of history that make us reconsider the past and better understand the present, Butman and Targett examine the enterprising spirit that inspired European settlement of America and established a national culture of entrepreneurship and innovation that continues to this day.
About the Author
John Butman is an author, editor, and collaborative writer who focuses on issues at the intersection of social and business change. He is the co-author, with Simon Targett, of NEW WORLD, INC. The Making of America by England's Merchant Adventurers (Little, Brown 2018) and BREAKING OUT: How to Build Influence in a World of Competing Ideas (Harvard Business Review Press, 2013) and other books. He has helped leading thinkers and strategists around the world develop their ideas and create and publish their books.
Butman's work has been featured or reviewed in the New York Times, Economist, Financial Times, Forbes, Huffington Post, Inc.com, Harvard Business Review, Bloomberg, Publishers Weekly, Big Think, 33 voices, The Independent, Times of London, Kirkus Reviews, the Orlando Sun-Sentinel, and many other outlets and venues.
He has been involved in the development of some thirty-five books, which have been translated into more than twenty languages, and include New York Times, Boston Globe, BusinessWeek, and Toronto Globe and Mail bestsellers.
